GCP certification

[iphetamine]

How can the Good Clinical Practice certification benefit? It's an online course and there's no practical/experience section to it.
Is it worth it?

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[PharmDKat]

How can the Good Clinical Practice certification benefit? It's an online course and there's no practical/experience section to it.
Is it worth it?

What are you ambitions/career goals?

 

[iphetamine]

What are you ambitions/career goals?

I'm looking into get some clinical research experience.
There's also "Drugs For Clinical Trials Involving Human Subjects" course that's offered.

 

[PharmDKat]

A fellowship involving clinical research would be a better investment in my opinion or just getting the experience where you get this sort of training on the job. Fellowships typically pay a low salary but so would a clinical trial assistant/clinical trial coordinator job. There are also entry-level CRA jobs at big companies like quintiles, PPD, etc...that comprehensively train you in all the things these courses offer you. Unfortunately that is a saturated market as well, where you are competing against people from healthcare and non-healthcare background alike and so these entry level positions come up very rarely. An alternative would be to get into oncology as a pharmacist - since that is a booming research market and networking to leverage that experience within clinical research positions.

If you can afford to get the knowledge with these certifications, do it. But based on my personal research in the area - people with a whole lot less education are able to obtain the knowledge these certification courses offer on the job and go up the career ladder with time.

 

[iphetamine]

A fellowship involving clinical research would be a better investment in my opinion or just getting the experience where you get this sort of training on the job. Fellowships typically pay a low salary but so would a clinical trial assistant/clinical trial coordinator job. There are also entry-level CRA jobs at big companies like quintiles, PPD, etc...that comprehensively train you in all the things these courses offer you. Unfortunately that is a saturated market as well, where you are competing against people from healthcare and non-healthcare background alike and so these entry level positions come up very rarely. An alternative would be to get into oncology as a pharmacist - since that is a booming research market and networking to leverage that experience within clinical research positions.

If you can afford to get the knowledge with these certifications, do it. But based on my personal research in the area - people with a whole lot less education are able to obtain the knowledge these certification courses offer on the job and go up the career ladder with time.

Thanks for the response. Oncology is exactly what I'm looking for down the road, but currently I can't find anything that's why I'm looking into these certifications to try at least into the door. They are offered for free since I'm a masters student. Unfortunately, my masters is not related to oncology or anything clinically related.

 

[PharmDKat]

Oh if they are free just do it for yourself to learn, aboslutely! It will will document your dedication and interest on the job application and it cannot hurt.

I hope someone else can offer some helpful advice other than myself because I am essentially in the same boat - trying to get some career momentum within clinical research.